A Window into Time (Novella) (4 page)

That night I heard Rachel ask: “Dave, how long do you think this is going to last?”

“Ease off, darling,” Dad replied. “Boys aren't kind to anyone outside the norm. It must have been awful for him out there. I bet they were from the sink estate.”

“You need to get him an education statement.”

“When term starts I'll have him assessed, sure. I've already spoken to the principal about it. But it won't help outside school.”

“His clothes were a right mess.”

“He'll be okay. He just needs to avoid those lads.”

“They weren't lads, Dave. You're showing your age. Nobody today is a
lad.
”

“I know.”

“Really? Down with the kids, huh?'

“Going down with something.”

Rachel giggled. Their bed started squeaking.

I pulled my headphones on and streamed the new episode of
Big Bang Theory.

Michael. That's who the not-me memory came from. There was more memory this time, not just a quick glimpse of BusSplash Road like before. I could remember what Michael was thinking. For a start, he's called Michael Finsen, age…mid-twenties, I estimated. Or he was when he played that football game. There's no way I could work out exactly what year he was playing. I was sure it was late autumn, though. I remember the ground wasn't all hard like it was after a frost, and there were still a few brown leaves left on the trees. I was pleased with myself for working that out. It's the way Sherlock Holmes would have analyzed the memory.

But I wasn't sure where. I'd never seen that park before. It was big. There were no houses visible, just trees and two more football pitches—they both had teams playing. There was a background sound of traffic, like London always has.

And it was all men playing. No kids. Michael knew the supporters—wives and girlfriends and friends from the pub, which was more solid evidence he was a grown-up. Michael had a girlfriend: Karen. She had short auburn hair and a nice round face. The memory didn't have her second name—he just thought of her as Karen—and I guessed she was about twenty-one (I'm not good at guessing age for old people). He liked the way she smiled at him. Which was embarrassing enough to watch, let alone having that memory in my head forever.

If Michael was in his teens in 2000, when he got splashed by the bus (say seventeen), he'd be in his early thirties now. He was in his mid-twenties in the second memory; therefore the football game must have taken place around 2009, give or take a year. So I supposed he and Karen were married now.

When I got home afterward and shoved all my clothes in the laundry basket, I put his name into Google. There were plenty of people with the same name on Facebook, but that didn't do me any good. See, I overlooked one important fact. The memory didn't have his face in it. Unless I got another memory that included him staring into a mirror, I wouldn't know what he looked like.

After I realized that, I went through the Facebook pages, anyway, and checked the relationship status on each of them. No Michael Finsen was married to anyone called Karen. There were five Michael Finsens in London. Two of them were about the right age, assuming I'd deduced everything properly. And one did look familiar—it was very weird. I know I hadn't seen him before, but as soon as I checked his Facebook photos (there were only seven, and three had him in them) I was sure I had. So there was now some part of his subconscious memory in my head that recognized him for me. Which was really spooky.

The Facebook page said he worked in finance and lived in Docklands. He hadn't filled in the rest of it. He hadn't updated it in over eighteen months. Who does that?

When
Big Bang Theory
finished, I suddenly wondered if this brain-to-brain time travel was two-way. Did he have my memory? That would be unbelievably awful. I was running from Kenan Abbot and his crew. So that's all Michael Finsen would know about me. I didn't want him to know anything about me, let alone what happened this afternoon.

Later: He couldn't have a memory of me. If he did, he would have been there on BusSplash Road to stop Kenan. Any decent law-abiding person would stop a gang assault, surely. He seemed pretty normal. And if he did work in finance, he'd be middle-class. He'd alert the police.

Later again: Maybe he wasn't there because he was sectioned and locked up in a mental ward. It was all right for me; I could use the Internet to look things up that have happened to him—his life is history to me. But for him, back when he was playing that football match, most of my life hadn't happened. So if he told people he'd seen a vision of the future, they would have thought he was crazy.

I checked the Internet; there's no list of all the insane people locked up in the UK. There must be one somewhere, the Internet has all the information the human race owns, but I couldn't find it.

I opened a new Gmail account, calling it Big Russell, and used that to set up a Facebook page in the same name, making up lots of details. I even put in some random pictures of London I ripped from Instagram to make it look authentic. Then I sent Michael Finsen a friend request from it. I was hoping he'd think it was coming from the striker on the other football team and answer.

I fell asleep waiting for him to reply.

Michael Finsen still hadn't replied by Saturday morning, so I sent him another friend request from Big Russell.

After breakfast we all got in the car and drove north up the A1 to Peterborough. Dad wanted to get the Yaxley house sorted out ready to sell, which meant we had to empty it. I didn't want to go back; just about everything there would be a memory trigger. But I didn't want anyone else sorting through my stuff, either.

I figured messaging Michael must be a paradox—or maybe a subparadox, because it's hardly a biggie—so the universe wouldn't allow it. If Michael had stopped Kenan from assaulting me, then it wouldn't have happened, and I wouldn't have hurt my ankle falling over in the park. I wouldn't have his memory and he wouldn't have mine.

There's something called causality that seriously means time travel can't happen. It's like the hard science explanation of paradox. There's plenty of academic papers about causality published on the Internet, but they're like
really
technical.

But causality wasn't the thing stopping Michael Finsen from answering my Facebook friend request; ignoring me was his own decision. Maybe he wasn't a nice person after all and didn't want to save me.

Second thought: Michael Finsen wouldn't know what year/month/day it was when Kenan and his crew went for me. Next time I got a memory of his, I was going to say the date, time, and place where I was out loud. Then if he got my memory, he'd know. If I do it right, I'd probably turn around and he'd be there. How cool would that be?

Uncle Gordon had been sorting out the house in Yaxley. Supposedly.

We arrived there midmorning, and the garage was full of boxes. Trouble was, they were all empty. Uncle Gordon was meant to have put all the house contents in them ready for collection by a local auction company, which was doing a house clearance for us—at one o'clock.

He'd brought the boxes but hadn't packed them.

“Yeah, sorry about that, fella,” he told Dad when he met us in the lounge. “I've been kinda busy. Big order for Andries.”

“For what?” Dad said. I could see how angry he was, but he was making an effort to stay calm. He knows how much I like Uncle Gordon.

“Andries. This new acid-grunge band out of Leeds. They're touring next month, seventeen dates. Gonna be big. Not the sort of folding I can turn down.”

“Did you pack anything?” Rachel asked in exasperation.

“Uh”—Uncle Gordon scratched the back of his head as he glanced around—“I made an inventory.”

I was pretty sure he hadn't. I could see everything was in exactly the same place it had been when I left.

“Good,” Dad said. “Where is it?”

“Man! I left it at home. Sorry.”

“It's all right,” I said before Dad got really angry. “I know what's in every room. I can write a new one.” I got my tablet out and sat down.

“You can't know everything in a whole house,” Rachel said.

“Whoa, you don't know your stepson very well, do you?” Uncle Gordon told her.

She gave Dad a very direct stare, expecting to be backed up. For once, he just shrugged.

“Write it out, Jules,” Dad told me. “Two lists. Stuff we can send to auction, and everything else we can bag for the dumpster.” He glared at Uncle Gordon. “There is a dumpster coming, isn't there?”

“Absolutely!”

“When?” Rachel asked.

“Next week.” With his back to her, he pulled a big mock-worried face at me.

I grinned back and started typing. I do like my uncle Gordon.

I didn't go into Mum's bedroom or the kitchen—I figured the memory triggers would be strongest there. Rachel took a roll of black bin bags up there and filled them with Mum's clothes. I typed out all Mum's jewelry, including her wedding and engagement rings.

Dad and Uncle Gordon started clearing the lounge, putting it all into the boxes. There were lots of books, and the good crockery in a cabinet, and ornaments, and pictures.

The estate agent arrived at midday, and Dad started showing him around. I could hear them arguing at lot. Dad was telling him how much the house should be valued at, and he knew because that's what he did in London. The agent kept telling Dad that Yaxley didn't have London prices.

Uncle Gordon leaned over my shoulder as I was typing out the kitchen list. “Uh, maybe scratch that, man,” he said, pointing at the air fryer. “Mine was broken.”

He didn't have one. “Mum would have wanted you to have it,” I told him. “Anything else broken?”

“The toaster.”

“Right.”

“Kettle, coffeemaker, food processor, juicer, some plates, cutlery.”

I started removing items.

“I don't have the dumpster company's phone number on me,” he said sheepishly. “Could you look one up for me?”

“Sure.” I opened a Web browser app.

“You're a lifesaver, Jules. I owe you.”

“That's okay. How's the business? That Andries contract sounds good.”

“Ah, you know: another month, another million.”

“In Zimbabwe dollars?”

He gave me a fond grin. “The most reliable currency in the world. Know why?”

“You can never devalue it.”

“Because there's nothing left to devalue.”

“Uncle Gordon?”

“Whatsup?”

“You did physics. Is time travel really possible?”

“No. Causality prevents it in real life. But that doesn't mean you can't still love all the
Back to the Future
films.”

“Right.”

“Why are you asking?”

“Just wondered, that's all.”

“She's dead, Jules. You can't change that.”

“I know.” Actually, I hadn't thought of that. Not at all.

He gave me a hug. “How're you doing?”

“Usual. School's bad.” I shrugged.

“You want me to come down to London and deliver some clobberence?”

“Some what?”

“Clobberence. It's like consequence but delivered by a baseball bat.”

“No! Really, Uncle Gordon, no.”

“Hey, I can still handle myself, no worries. Especially against some punk kids. I helped security backstage at a Duran Duran concert once, you know, back in the eighties when they were massive. Man, those teenage girls. When they got their hands on you, they knew which bits to squeeze to make a guy's eyes water, you dig what I'm saying?”

I started typing again, staring intently at the tablet. “I get it, Uncle Gordon. Thanks.”

“I don't like people picking on you.”

“School's always bad. I'm used to it.”

“But you shouldn't be used to it, Jules,” he said softly. “That is so wrong.”

“It's okay. It's only for a few more years, then I'll be at university and the stupids will be nowhere.”

“You are beautiful, Jules, so beautiful. I see so much of her in you.”

I was blushing, but it was good embarrassment. I hadn't known there was such a thing. That's Uncle Gordon for you: The Best.

Dad had one last argument with the estate agent, and the poor man left.

“He looked happy,” Uncle Gordon said.

“He's an idiot,” Dad said, all grumpy. “I'm not settling for less than four hundred K.”

“Maybe you should just rent the place out like all the others,” Uncle Gordon said. “That way you'll get the mortgage paid off, and Jules will have a house when he's twenty.”

“Really?” I asked.

Dad gave Uncle Gordon a curt glance. “I paid for this house,” he said. “You have no idea how hard I had to work to keep those payments going after we separated. It's been really tough.”

“It has,” Rachel chimed in, nodding approvingly as she leaned against him.

“Once this place is sold along with the flat, we can move into something better in London,” Dad said.

“Well, that's all you're getting,” Uncle Gordon said. “I'm the executor, right? Jules is named as the sole beneficiary in her will, and I'll make damn sure he gets everything he's entitled to.”

“That money could help him a lot right now,” Dad said.

“Help you out, you mean,” Uncle Gordon replied quickly.

“What money?” I asked.

“Your mum had life insurance, Jules.”

“I paid the premiums,” Dad said.

“The court had to order you to,” Uncle Gordon said. “It was for your wife and son, man. Why did they have to order that, hey?”

“You have no idea what divorce lawyers are like. They put both of us through hell.”

“I certainly know what yours did.”

I'd never seen Uncle Gordon angry before. It was quite impressive—in a scary way. Maybe I should tell him where Kenan Abbot lived, after all.

A van's horn sounded outside. It was the auction house people. Dad and Uncle Gordon stopped glaring at each other. Rachel took Dad's arm, and they went outside to speak to the van driver and his mate.

“Your dad's a good man, Jules,” Uncle Gordon said. “Don't ever think different. We're all still shook up over your mum. And this day is right emotional for everyone.”

“I know.”

“Come on, let's go up to your room. You need to pack all your stuff to take down to London.”

I was surprised when I went back up to my old bedroom. Physically it hadn't changed, of course. But now it looked drab somehow. I didn't want to take the clothes that were still in the drawers. They'd all been tight on me when I left for London. First pair of trousers I tried on were five centimeters short above the ankle.

“Growth spurt, huh?” Uncle Gordon said sympathetically.

“I suppose.” The same went for everything else. Old toys that were for kids a lot younger. My books were mostly YA, too, and I'd stopped reading that stuff ages ago.

In the end I only carried one box out to the car, and that was barely half full. The men from the auction house were loading furniture into the van. I thought it might bother me, seeing my old home broken up like this, but it didn't. That part of my life was over. Most of the time all I could think about now were Michael's memories, and how that was going to change everything.

I watched Uncle Gordon load a box of food from the freezer into the boot of his car.

“How much is the life insurance?” I asked him.

He produced a mild frown. “Not like you to talk about money, Jules.”

“I know. But how much?”

“I think the policy is for a hundred thousand.”

“What?” A
hundred thousand
pounds! I was so shocked I could only grunt.

“It's a logical amount. It's supposed to take care of you until you're old enough to start earning the readies for yourself. Don't worry; I'll make sure you get it properly. Pay your tuition fees when it's time for you to go to university, and all that nonsense. Mind, you'll be surprised how depressingly fast it'll go.”

“Is that much enough to buy a high-energy physics lab?”

“Er, I don't think so, nah.”

“But I could maybe rent one?” I asked urgently.

“I guess. Yeah, sure. Why not.”

“That's brilliant.”

“Okay, I'm biting. Why?”

I shrugged, trying to appear all nonchalant. “It's what I want to do. Invent something that'll help the whole world.”

“Good for you, Jules. Good for you.”

I was so happy. I'd been right about what was happening. Future-me doesn't even need to send now-me lottery numbers. With that kind of money, I could start experimenting with exotic matter up there in the future.

Oh yeah. I'm going to be the inventor of time travel!